FEATURE: Ex-hot rodder supports Japanese-Brazilian children in trouble+

TOKYO, Feb. 2 Kyodo -
Anderson Hyuma Gushi, a 30-year-old Japanese-Brazilian, remembers his boyhood
days when he was bullied by his classmates at an elementary school as a
''foreigner with a Japanese face.''
He dropped out of an evening high school and became the leader of a group of
hot rodders, facing violence, discrimination and jail time.
But now Gushi draws on his difficult past to mentor Japanese-Brazilian children
now experiencing the same problems he did 10 years ago, hoping to change
attitudes toward them and help them realize a brighter future.
In 1990 when guest workers of Japanese ancestry were legalized, Gushi came to
Japan with his mother and three brothers to live with his father, a
Japanese-Brazilian, who came to Japan the year before to work at a glass plant
in Tsu, Mie Prefecture.
There were very few Japanese-Brazilians in Japan at that time. In 2007,
Japanese-Brazilians living in Japan totaled about 320,000, most of them in the
Kanto and Tokai regions supporting Japanese manufacturers.
Gushi was the lone foreigner when he started elementary school. But he was soon
isolated because he could not speak Japanese except, ''Yes.'' He became an
object of contempt by his classmates and was assaulted.
He desperately studied Japanese but was often told, ''You are a foreigner with
a Japanese face. Go back to your country.''
While he was a junior high school student, he was taken to the principal's
office when he punched a student before being punched and was forced to kneel
down on the floor before the student's father. ''Why should I do such a
thing?'' he thought as tears streamed down his face.
He dropped out of an evening high school after attending it only for one term,
fooled around town and got into fights. With Okinawa-style karate he practiced
in Sao Paulo as a weapon, he became the boss of a group of hot rodders
numbering several hundreds. They did not call him a foreigner, and he said, ''I
found fulfillment in life for the first time.''
He repeated acts of violence as if to challenge society and lost self-control
when a member who wanted to leave the group delivered a parting shot, saying,
''I am no longer enjoying being with a foreigner.'' He assaulted the man and
was placed on probation.
When he was 21, he already had two children born in a marriage with a group
member and he decided to take life seriously. He got a sales job at a natural
food company through his father but when he showed a name card with ''Anderson
Gushi'' on it, people said, ''Are you a foreigner? No thank you.'' The salary
base was several thousand yen a month before commission.
The president of the company advised him to change his first name to Hyuma, the
name of a popular baseball cartoon character. His sales grew, and he could earn
an income of several hundred thousand yen a month, but he was not satisfied.
His father suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, and said before dying, ''I lived
for 48 years but I never found happiness.'' Gushi felt angry at himself and
considered suicide. But when he stood on the roof of a building, he trembled.
After the death of his father, Gushi felt hopeless and saw going back to jail
as a last resort, but he did not want to hurt other people. He damaged vehicles
parked at the plant and was arrested. In a court ruling in October 2001, he was
sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for two years.
When he was in the detention house, his wife and 2-year-old daughter came to
see him. ''Why was Papa behind the glass windows?'' he said his daughter
murmured.
He saw hope in his daughter and made the decision to change and use his
experience to help children.
Gushi disbanded his hot rodder group and visited the boards of education in Mie
Prefecture hoping to help foreign children. Everywhere, he was laughed at
because he was only a junior high school graduate with a criminal record.
Two months later, he was offered a job by the Matsusaka city government's board
of education to visit schools with a monthly salary of several tens of
thousands of yen because the city was struggling to cope with an increasing
number of children of Japanese ancestry.
The schools he has visited are almost the same as 10 years before. When trouble
occurred, teachers believed what Japanese children said. Asked about the reason
for discrimination, an elementary school pupil said, ''My parents tell me not
to approach foreigners.''
He listened to what the children of Japanese ancestry said and talked with
their Japanese teachers and children to seek their understanding.
At an elementary school in Matsusaka, Carlos Ota, now 18, who always felt
ostracized by others, met Gushi, and since then, ''I have told every trouble to
Anderson,'' he said. Ota wants to become a Japanese-language teacher.
Toshikazu Yaeshima, 51, an official in charge of human rights education at the
Mie prefectural board of education, said, ''They have become proud of their
Brazilian heritage after seeing Mr. Gushi's way of living.''
In addition to supporting children as a part-time lecturer, Gushi studied at a
correspondence-course high school. He has been invited by junior and senior
high schools to deliver lectures about his experience. Now, such lecturers
number close to 200 a year.
Since 2006, Gushi has been heading the nonprofit group NPO World People with
various cultures designed to promote mutual coexistence and world peace.
''Korean residents of Japan, villages being discriminated against, the
disabled... It is not merely foreigners of Japanese ancestry who are in
trouble. What can I do for them?'' Gushi said.
==Kyodo
2009-02-02 22:50:31